Because I have very square shoulders, I long ago learned that I look best in raglan and circular yokes. One bottom-up seamless sweater had three different sleeve/shoulder shapings before it was done, the winner being a raglan.

That’s because I have what Maggie Righetti, in her Sweater Design in Plain English, calls the rectangular figure type. Shoulder pads are out, and lines that minimize rather than emphasize the shoulders are in. So raglans and circular yokes it is (figure 11.34 on page 124).

I also have—cough—a large skull, needing a size 7-5/8 fitted baseball cap. (I had to buy the largest mortarboard size for both high school and college graduations, and they were ready to slide off at the least provocation.) I’m always afraid that I won’t be able to get my head through a crew neck, so I prefer V-necks, which also conveniently look good on rectangular figure types. I had previously made a sweater with what I dubbed a U-neck, which is exactly the same as a crew neck except that it sits about three inches lower. (Maggie Righetti’s “U-neck” is both deeper and wider than a standard crew neck.)

I prefer to work in the round so that my sweaters are seamless, as I loathe sewing hand-knits. But the deep front neck of this first sweater meant that I would have to work a considerable portion of the sweater flat. (I have steeked several garments, but they were all regular wool, and I don’t fancy steeking cotton.)

I have added short rows to raise the back necks of all the ITR sweaters I’ve made, but I didn’t bother figuring out if my flat and ITR gauges matched or not, because there simply wasn’t enough flat knitting to stand out too much if the gauge was substantially different (the previous U-neck sweater I made was an argyle worked flat).

But because cotton is less forgiving than wool, I determined that I would swatch both flat and ITR to see if I would need to change needle sizes when I changed the way I was working once I had completed the front neck shaping.